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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2131 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 21, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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>Xbox One controller that I use with my Windows 10 computer stops working (switch under right bumper is broken)
>Buy 8BitDo Ultimate Wired Controller for Xbox
>Windows doesn't recognize it
>Troubleshoot with 8BitDo support
>The controller works on my mother's computer but not on mine, indicating a driver problem
>8BitDo support gives me a driver to install
>It doesn't fix the problem
>8BitDo's spam filter blocks my messages when I try to continue the support conversation
>Manually deleting the three driver files associated with the controller doesn't fix the problem
>Okay, fine. I initiate the return process for the 8BitDo controller and get a GameSir G7 SE controller instead
>Windows doesn't recognize that controller either
>I throw up my hands, cancel the return process for the 8BitDo controller, and completely reinstall Windows
>The problem still has not been fixed

Obviously, @orthoxerox has used his ineffable psychic powers to make my computer incompatible with controllers, specifically to force me to play with mouse and keyboard.

Weird. Are you seeing anything change in Device Manager when you plug in or unplug the controllers? If there's no sound or tree reloading behavior, that points to an issue with the USB hardware on the motherboard. If there are changes, set up an event manager filter to track down what they are; unknown device IDs can also point to hardware issues (usually a past short-from-D+-to-5V). If it's a desktop, switching to different USB ports or to a PCI(E) motherboard might be a cheap way to get back up and running.

Are you seeing anything change in Device Manager when you plug in or unplug the controllers? If there are changes, set up an event manager filter to track down what they are.

When I plug in the controller, I hear a "USB connected" sound, and then every five seconds on loop a "USB disconnected" sound. After every "USB disconnected" sound, Device Manager does an update flash as if something changed, and a "USB device connected" icon appears for a split second in the Taskbar. But following the procedure laid out in the linked Reddit post does not cause Event Viewer to show any Kernel-PnP or Kernel-Pnp-Rundown events corresponding to these happenings.

If it's a desktop, switching to different USB ports or to a PCI(E) motherboard might be a cheap way to get back up and running.

The problem occurs regardless of whether I use a front USB port (belonging to the case, connected indirectly to the motherboard) or a rear USB port (belonging directly to the motherboard).

Oof. Do you have similar issues with other USB devices in the same physical ports? Keyboards, mice, usb thumb drives, especially anything with higher power draw or running in faster USB modes? Or is it just controllers, nothing else?

Do you know your motherboard? If not, grab CPU-z and check the mainboard tab, then check for BIOS updates from the manufacturer. Especially AMD motherboards have had sometimes-very-weird issues with specific USB modes in early BIOS releases.

The problem occurs regardless of whether I use a front USB port (belonging to the case, connected indirectly to the motherboard) or a rear USB port (belonging directly to the motherboard).

It's a bit of a hail-mary, but try unplugging the connection from the motherboard to the front side panel (they're keyed, so it's pretty easy to reinsert the right direction when you're done testing). In humid environments, I have seen bad connections there cause problems all across a hub. PCI(E) expansion cards are cheap as another try if you've got the available slots, but unfortunately most physical stores that stock them will charge an obnoxious premium.

I installed a PCIe-to-USB adapter card, and the 8BitDo controller works when connected to it. But when I installed the card my motherboard's built-in sound chip stopped outputting sound, both directly through the motherboard's audio output and indirectly through the case's audio output! Sound still works when routed through the controller's audio output, so overall it's no problem. But it's just ridiculous how finicky computers can be.

Hm... Can you check your default sound device? Windows will normally try to only output to one audio port at a time. In Win10, left-click the Sound Volume control from the System Tray, click the name of the currently-selected audio output, and you should get a list of all available outputs. Win11 hides the interface a bit more, but it still exists. Look for one that says Speakers or AC97. You may have to restart applications or refresh web pages to have them recognize the new intended audio output, although modern apps are usually pretty good about responding near-instantly.

Very common problem where it defaults to HDMI or DisplayPort, especially when going to monitors without speakers or where the speakers default to no volume.

It's possible to get multiple outputs working simultaneously, but it's kinda jank and requires going pretty deep into the interface weeds.

Can you check your default sound device?

It was the motherboard's RealTek audio chip, same as always. I even reinstalled the RealTek driver from the motherboard manufacturer's webpage, but that changed nothing. With my headphones attached to the 8BitDo controller, the default output device now is "Headphones (Xbox Controller)".

Very common problem where it defaults to HDMI or DisplayPort, especially when going to monitors without speakers or where the speakers default to no volume.

Actually, the Windows interface used to show audio outputs to my two monitors, but now those two outputs have disappeared. I don't know whether that happened when I reinstalled Windows 10 or when I added the PCIe-to-USB card.

But none of this matters, since I always use headphones anyway.

Do you have similar issues with other USB devices in the same physical ports? Keyboards, mice, USB thumb drives, especially anything with higher power draw or running in faster USB modes? Or is it just controllers, nothing else?

I haven't had any problems with other USB devices (including the aforementioned first-party controller), even in the same ports. (Possibly relevant: The first-party controller uses a USB A to Micro-A cable, while the two third-party controllers use USB A to C cables. But I've connected phones and GoPro cameras with USB A to C cables previously without problems.)

check for BIOS updates from the manufacturer

It appears that my AMD motherboard had USB problems that were fixed by BIOS updates around year 2021. I already was using a 2022 BIOS version, and now have updated it to the latest non-beta version from year 2024. This did not fix the problem.

It's a bit of a Hail Mary, but try unplugging the connection from the motherboard to the front-side panel.

This did not fix the problem.

PCIe expansion cards are cheap as another try if you've got the available slots

I guess I have no other option.

I want to talk about scotch for a bit, mostly because the relatively recent lowering in prices has done bad things to my bank account. Right now I'm slowly working my way through three bottles; a Laphroaig PX cask I picked up at a duty free in 2021, a recent batch of the Kilkerran 12, and a Compass Box Spice Tree. Will probably crack an older age statement for Christmas.

As a young man, I always had a kind of disdain for drinkers, seeing as there were so many examples of the behavior of others while intoxicated I found generally intolerable. This was, in retrospect, a problem of peers; young adults are difficult at the best of times and when the arrogance and invincibility of youth clashes with lowered inhibitions it sparks a chemical reaction that can have truly disastrous consequences.

Plus, alcohol tasted awful.

I still remember my first proper taste of single malt scotch. It was a Highland Park 12, back when Highland Park hadn't become an overmarketed weird Viking-branded joke, and I remember taking small sips and being surprised at the things I found in the glass. What followed was a long trip down the rabbit hole, and an appreciation for the liquid, the history, the provenance and the craft of it. The world had changed so quickly within my limited life that the history and age appealed to me. Here at last was something that lasted, where men planted trees they would never see grow. Someone could put the work into distilling and lay down a cask knowing they'd never taste it, that it might be stockpiled and aged well beyond their working years. There was no lie in it; if it was thin, weak, sharp, not properly aged, you'd know from the first sip.

Of course, now with the benefit of time I can recognize that for what it is. Whisky changes over the years, as does taste, distilleries, business and management, and in the business of selling brown spirits investment and distillation in a product that takes years to bring to market is perilous. Old men grumble about how their tipple wasn't what it was, that the relationship marketing and trust in the distilleries was often damaged, that their preferred blend now tasted thin and watery. The rise and explosion in non-age-stated scotch, the madness and fraud in whisky investment, the search for new and weird casks to use as high quality sherry and bourbon casks for first-fill grew fewer.

I also remember my first proper taste of bourbon. I also remember being surprised at it in comparison to scotch; everything in the glass was so uncomplicated I ended up killing a bottle unreasonably quickly and coming to the conclusion that it was designed to take the edge off a day and kill brain cells quickly and efficiently. I didn't find it challenging, kept constantly searching for more in the glass, and ended up drinking fast enough that I realized I was running the ragged edge of drinking for flavor vs drinking for drinking's sake - that road leads to alcoholism, and I was glad I recognized it early even if I am sorry to see it gone. I am still envious of Americans who are surrounded by the good stuff at reasonable prices; of course, flipper and scalper mania has seized there as it has with anything nice that people want, so maybe I was wrong to be envious.

Currently, the tail end of the whisky boom has led to an explosion in new distilleries in Scotland; Campbeltown is looking to see a handful of new ones, and Ardnamurchan and Ardnahoe are both making exceptional whisky for the few years they've been up and running. The new distilleries are the ones that truly surprise me; I had previously taken for granted that there was, in the end, no substitute for time when it came to scotch, but clearly modern cask management processes and newer equipment, as well as huge nerds on staff, has done something a bit special. The boom time is ending. I can see this as being nothing but good for me as the survivors will find that quality and the trust of the consumer must be earned.

It's really made me wonder about the correlation between a successful industry and a satisfied customer base. Maybe things being terrible are an indicator of just how good we have it and how far we have left to fall. When the bad times come, only the strongest buildings can stand in a storm. I sense something similar is happening in the video game industry this last year; the standbys and the investment and the AAA studios have seen expensive failure after failure while there's been more great games appearing out of nowhere completely outside the traditional trappings of the industry.

Great post. I feel obliged to say to keep an eye out for Torabhaig from the Isle of Skye once they hit the market with some properly aged stuff, great people who take the art of Scotch seriously.

I've been hearing good things. Of the new kids on the block Raasay I've also found very enjoyable.

Scotch, for me, is a product category where the cheap is pretty bad and shouldn't even be bothered with (by comparison to something like bourbon) but the best is exquisite. At first I thought I just didn't like scotch at all, until a neighbor started giving my dad really nice scotch (by which I mean, fourteen years ago in my life, a $50 bottle of single malt) that I came to understand it. Now I'll buy a $40-50 bottle every year or two if I see one on sale at the state store, and I'm finally working through some of the gift scotch from years past. I don't drink enough for the cost to really matter to me, though as more of my friends get divorced and hang out with me drinking I'll need to budget better.

What bottles would you recommend as great expressions of the art?

For what's readily available and great at relatively reasonable prices:

Regular tipple: Bunnahabhain 12, Oban 14, Benromach 15

Sherry cask: (red fruit, raisins, dark chocolate) Glenallachie 12/15

Bourbon cask: (vanilla, caramel, toffee) Deanston 12, Glencadam 10, Bruichladdich Classic Laddie if you want more of a lactic note

Peat/smoke: Kilchoman 100% Islay

Peat/Sherry combo: Ardbeg Uigeadail, Kilchoman Sanaig

It helps to keep an open mind, there's such a wide variety in scotch flavors that it's really a rewarding hobby to get into. I go through phases where I crave one thing or the other.

I'll see which one the state store stocks! I could probably use a bottle for when the in laws come over.

IMO: Ardbeg Uigeadail used to be pretty great back when I was sampling scotches.

Edit: shit, misremembered the distillery. Fixed.

You're thinking of Ardbeg, I believe, but I agree, the Uigedail is my personal favourite of the scotches that can be found in a shop. I think the trick is that aging an Islay in sherry casks somehow cuts out the alcohol burn but leaves all the peat/smoke for you.

If fivehour's looking for an affordable but high-quality scotch off the shelf in the US, the best bang for your buck is actually Costco. Their higher-end liquors are sourced from the best distilleries, but 'off-profile' - if, for instance, an Islay distillery makes a batch that isn't peaty enough for their brand, they'll sell it to Costco or Trader Joe's on the understanding that they will never be named as the source. If you're looking for something interesting and really good, I suggest Milroy's. Those guys are the biggest whiskey nerds in London and their house brand reflects that, plus a much wider selection they can recommend to taste over email.

At Walmart gawking at all the waddling endomorphic human detritus around me when the horrifying realization overtakes me that they’re all pawing after the exact same goyslop as me.

Does the goyslop make the human detritus?? These seem like mostly orthogonal issues. Food is food, you need it to eat. Yeah trash people like Oreos, because they are human and almost every human likes Oreos. They're filled with sugar and delicious. When I see a trash person they aren't that way because "they shop at Walmart and buy Oreos", but things like "they have nasty tattoos on their arm and look like they beat their wife" or "they are dressed like a prostitute, and have 4 children with 4 different fathers by the age of 23" or "they have no teeth and are 400 pounds with their gut spilling out of their crop top while they waddle around".

Yeah, maybe I bought a case of Dr Pepper and a pack of Oreos, but I also got fresh veggies and chicken as my main course, while the 400 pound hambeast got 5 cases of Dr Pepper and 8 packs of Oreos. It doesn't matter if they like some of the same things I like, they also lack impulse control and executive function and THAT is what makes them trash. If these people suddenly started shopping at Trader Joe's nothing would change and I'd just feel superior to them for having better financial sense because I'm not overpaying on groceries. Walmart is popular because it's cheap and efficient.

Hitler liked animals. I like animals. I'm not going to change my behavior or preferences just because they have an overlap with people I dislike for different reasons.

Can you give me some examples of the goyslop to which you refer?

Requesting help to decide how to spend the next 100 hours of my video game time. I just want a game that makes me feel something (anything, really: wonder at visual spectacle, curiosity for the world, some sort of emotional engagement with story or characters, satisfying movement mechanics, etc.). Preferably would like a game not requiring sweaty gamer skills, since I don't have the patience to replay a boss 20 times to move on. Current backlog leaders in no particular order: Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, Metaphor Refantazio, Clair Obscur, Mass Effect Trilogy, Death Stranding 1&2, Spider-Man 1&2. Open to other suggestions as well.

Starsector, one of the best games I've ever played

Mount and Blade but in space + with an incredibly tight combat loop

If you want curiosity for the world, you can try Blue Prince. Go in without spoilers and you'll do best. It's a giant puzzle house you build each day.

For a shorter game, play Inscription.

If you like RTS-ish games, Original War. Old, holds up great, very unique.

Play Half-Life 1/2

Outer Wilds does a great job of curiosity/mystery, as well as some other feelings. I hesitate to describe more because the fewer spoilers you have going into it the better.

A lot less than 100 hours though, so it won't fill up all that space, but would slot nicely between other things.

I played through 98% of Outer Wilds. For some reason, I could not figure out how to make the very last stretch in time and just gave up and watched the end on youtube. Greatly enjoyed everything up to that point.

An alternate to Outer Wilds is The Forgotten City. Another game where you're better off knowing little going in.

I liked that one too. I am too picky about games and don't have friends who know my tastes well enough for me to blindly trust their judgement, so I never play any games completely blind. But just knowing the basic premise (of both of them) is probably fine. The first hour or so might be even better completely blind, but the majority of the gameplay is the same.

I found it nihilistic and depressing, and the time limit annoying given the realistically portrayed gravitational physics.

I just want a game that makes me feel something

Not on the list but NieR Automata will make you feel something alright. For me that game remains steadfastly unbeaten in terms of emotional impact and I will never tire of shilling it.

Aside from that I second the Persona recommendation.

I've (un)fortunately already completed Automata. I tried Replicant, but couldn't quite stay engaged enough to get past the 2nd/3rd ending.

Of the options presented, Clair Obscur. Reasonably fun to play and tells an engaging story. The first Mass Effect is good too, but the games go downhill hard after the first.

Have you played the Persona games? (3, 4, 5)

I get a rare amount of emotional engagement with the characters in those games. No sweatiness required.

Funny, Persona 3 Reload is the game I'm currently playing (I finished 5 Royal some years ago). I thought about jumping straight to 4 Golden, but decided to wait for the upcoming 4 Revival since I think 200+ hours of Persona back to back could start to feel too repetitive. Agree on the engagement though. I can't articulate the secret sauce but they know how to make you connect to characters.

I have some concerns about P4R, mostly about localizers possibly diddling with Naoto's characterization. My source for these concerns is ultimately my ass, but enough of the Modern Audience Discourse about P4 revolves around a motivated misreading of Naoto and Kanji's characters that I'm very much suspicious of how the localizers will handle it.

Then I have a design gripe that isn't a huge deal but still struck me with P3R - I kinda like the less P5-streamlined combat. Baton Pass/Shift removes some of the friction between hitting a weakness and setting up an All-Out attack, which I liked in P5 but I realized that abilities felt less impactful because they reduced down to "hit the right color in single target or AOE and then get the bulk of your actual damage from All-Out". When your All Out setup relies on the turn order and double-tapping enemies to down them and keep them down, your ability damage matters more, you're more directly incentivized to use physical attacks and discover how massively useful crits are (fun fact: I played P5 first and didn't realize critical hits were physical only until late game because there was only one physical damage type that wasn't disincentivized by limited ammo and I was conditioned to fish for All Outs with magic attacks). There's a whole bonus dungeon that relies on your mastering the knockdown -> dizzy mechanic to not get swept by some crazy enemy groups while your SP is actively sapped after each fight. The combat system has a grit to it that I really enjoyed that got smoothed over in P3R, IMO at least a bit to its detriment.

I figured there was a remake of P4 coming after the sufficiently commercially successful remake of P3 (leaked numbers from five months ago showed 2.07M units sold), but hadn't heard the name yet. If they have the same team doing 4R that did 3R, it should end up being pretty satisfyingly done.

P4 is an excellent, cozy game with some very charming characters. They released a non-remade PC version of it a few years back, and it's perfectly playable despite the datedness. You can play in 4K 120 fps, for instance. But if I were given a choice between playing that version now or waiting a year for the remake, I'd probably stay patient and get more QoL later. Some QoL things that you take for granted in 5R and 3R are absent in 4.

Re: secret sauce - I read an interesting thing about the character designs in Persona games. They are designed to have an appeal that does not reveal the artist's gender!

There's an interview (in Japanese) with the lead character creator here: https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/interview/241125m

I vote for Mass Effect and Clair Obscur, both outstanding games.

I loved the originality of Death Stranding but hated the gameplay loop.

Hated the controls of Metaphor Refantazio so much I refused to play it.

CP2077 consistently fails to grip me. Now that I'm done with my first EU5 campaign maybe I'll give it a go after Dispatch.

I just finished the CP2077 main storyline yesterday, but I had left a lot of the side jobs undone. I'll definitely be going back to do some of those, but after a while I really miss the humor and sarcasm of, say, GTAV, which makes just wandering around the world fun.

I tried to do a completionist run of CP2077 and fizzled out about 2/3rds of the way through. It just failed to grip me enough. If I'd just spent more time focusing the main quest I'd probably have finished it.

I loved the originality of Death Stranding but hated the gameplay loop.

Hated the controls of Metaphor Refantazio so much I refused to play it.

You should include a disclaimer that you played with mouse and keyboard rather than with controller, so your experience may be highly unreflective of others'.

Well, I have always assumed most PC gamers play with KB&M.

As ToaKraka said, most PC gamers do until they don't. Something like Devil May Cry is a special kind of masochism to play on the text input device.

Ha, I remember very well when I pirated DMC3 as a teenager and couldn't afford a controller. The difficulty and the over-the-top edgelord-ness meshed well with my mind-state at the time, so I pushed through despite the, as you put it, masochism of the endeavour.

According to Steam's statistics, the proportion of PC gamers who use controllers varies widely based on the genre of game that is being played.

  • Overall: 10 percent

  • Real-time strategy games: Less than 1 percent

  • First-person shooter games: 7 to 8 percent

  • Third-person adventure games: 40 to 50 percent

  • Sports and fighting games: More than 70 percent

  • Racing and skating games: More than 90 percent

Those numbers are from year 2021. As of 2024, the "overall" figure has increased from 10 percent to 15 percent, but Steam has not seen fit to provide per-genre numbers again.

I personally played Death Stranding 1 with a controller. And I have seen several 4chan threads laughing at people who try to play action RPGs like Dark Souls and Nioh with mouse and keyboard, fail, and leave bad reviews on that basis.

I actually like the left part of the gamepad with its thumbstick. It's the right part that I hate. I have five fingers, and you expect me to press four buttons with my thumb, including buttons like jump/dodge and attack that I might want to press in very rapid succession?

It depends on the game. Yes, in Gundam Battle Operation 2 or Nioh you will need to have a very quick right thumb in order to switch between weapons/stances and to dodge enemy attacks. But IIRC Death Stranding is significantly more slow-paced, even during its (rather annoying) boss fights—it puts the action into slow motion while you have the weapon-select menu open, and its combat does not involve split-second dodge-rolling. And Metaphor Refantazio obviously is not an action game at all.

Also: Nowadays, some controllers have two or four extra buttons on the back. These can receive custom remappings in order to duplicate face-button functions, shifting load from the player's right thumb to his middle fingers (and his brain, to remember which back buttons have been remapped to which face buttons, since the game will still give face-button prompts).

FWIW you usually don't have to press the face buttons at the same time. Rapid succession is not a problem for me usually.

I vote for Death Stranding 1. I played it for over 250 hours and didn't even get around to finishing it.

Wanted to post this elsewhere but so far it's just in the 'fun' category, I think.

**Aligned, Multiple-transient Events in the First Palomar Sky Survey **

Abstract:

Old, digitized astronomical images taken before the human spacefaring age offer a rare glimpse of the sky before the era of artificial satellites. In this paper, we present the first optical searches for artificial objects with high specular reflections near the Earth. We follow the method proposed in Villarroel et al. and use a transient sample drawn from Solano et al. We use images from the First Palomar Sky Survey to search for multiple (within a plate exposure) transients that, in addition to being point-like, are aligned along a narrow band. We provide a shortlist of the most promising candidate alignments, including one with ∼3.9σ statistical significance. These aligned transients remain difficult to explain with known phenomena, even if rare optical ghosting producing point-like sources cannot be fully excluded at present. We explore remaining possibilities, including fast reflections from highly reflective objects in geosynchronous orbit, or emissions from artificial sources high above Earth’s atmosphere. We also find a highly significant (∼22σ) deficit of POSS-I transients within Earth's shadow when compared with the theoretical hemispheric shadow coverage at 42,164 km altitude. The deficit is still present though at reduced significance (∼7.6σ) when a more realistic plate-based coverage is considered. This study should be viewed as an initial exploration into the potential of archival photographic surveys to reveal transient phenomena, and we hope it motivates more systematic searches across historical data sets.

With frank confusion, I discovered that a Korean place near me offers raw meat as a delivery option on Uber Eats. This is normal enough for a grocery store, but this is a normal ass restaurant that'll sell you sliced pork belly, steak and the like, all raw, alongside relatively standard (and cooked) options.

Why? Is there a market for people who order ingredients for their meals from a restaurant? Having to cook takeout seems to diminish the value proposition, but I can't keep up with the kids these days.

I buy raw Korean meat from Korean markets. Bulgolgi and short ribs mostly. I'm paying for the butcher to cut and marinate it for me. I own a Korean barbecue grill. It is a big round metal plate you place over a camp stove.

I tried making my own bulgolgi marinade using jarred marinade from a Korean market. It was noticeably worse than the Korean butcher. So I just buy the pre-marinated meats.

I'm white and my wife is Chinese. We just like Korean food.

I buy raw Korean meat from Korean markets.

Do they keep it separate or does it get mixed up with the animal meat sometimes?

I eat whatever they scoop out of the bulgolgi tray.

Korean BBQ. Slicing the beef is a bitch unless you have proper deli slicer at home. And even then it is not a complete cakewalk.

I know people who buy specialty ingredients through restaurants but they don't do it as a delivery through Uber eats.

This usually comes down to buying specialty ingredients that aren't readily available to consumers, or in that particular area.

Sometimes the restaurant actively markets this stuff and sometimes you have to get to know the owner.

Not Asian but I suspect it's because of Hot Pot culture.

It's a whole social thing that replaces drinking or goes in addition to drinking for some Asian communities.

Either that or they offer Korean BBQ and didn't bother taking the option off the delivery menu

This sounds right, but I prefer to believe that there's a large contingent of people out there rawdogging beef and pork like sashimi.

I have seen beef sashimi on a menu before. It's at least not considered unsafe like raw pork.

There's also stuff like beef carpaccio, beef tartare, and others. But all those are all relatively rare, and risky and difficult from a quality control-perspective, compared to fish sashimi.

Tartare is not rare (well, not in that way, haha!) in french and french adjascent cuisine. It's typical bistro fare, and it's not considered particularly risky. Just need fresh beef, remove exposed surfaces and then the rest is considered safe enough. On the other hand, fish is likelier to host parasites, so proper handling from fishing to the plate for sashimi is more crucial.

I'd be genuinely surprised if there were enough Koreans (or even East Asians) in my neck of the woods to provide demand for that. On the other hand, I can only assume the margins are great, if they're flipping cuts of meat raw or marinaded for 2-4x cost.

There's a huge market for "fun eating" where a unique social way of cooking and eating the food is part of the evening's entertainment.

Korean BBQ. Hot pot. Fondue. Even roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over a campfire.

So think of it as a ready to go memorable dinner party.

It's not just Koreans - a lot of my Asian friends of all stripes are into KBBQ and Hot Pot.

It may also be The Fashion among "Wordly" types to imitate the style.

And of course the margins are probably great - you can probably charge a lot to the "oh fuck we didn't get enough pork belly" crowd.

...this is probably a sign of the decline of humanity though (just plan better ffs).

So, has anyone else watched Vince Gilligan's new series Pluribus yet, and if so, what do you think of it?

Personally, I'm currently a bit lukewarm on it so far. It's still early days so I won't pass premature judgement on it, but a common complaint is that the show past episode 1 doesn't seem to have enough compelling material per episode to justify its runtime, and frankly I agree. Episodes are long and drawn-out, with much of the second and third episode being focused around a core repeated cycle of "Zosia (or some other stand-in for the hive) tries to do things for Carol" - "Carol gets aggressively angry at Zosia" - "[insert bad thing] happens" - "Carol feels bad" - repeat. The story beats are so repetitive.

I understand that this show is in part meant to be a tone piece and that the long extended shots are meant to build atmosphere, but the vibe isn't good enough to carry the show on its back alone (sometimes the show is so sterile and clean-looking that it comes off almost like stock footage to me), and there are plenty of shows which achieve a thoughtful pace while also moving the plot along in interesting and compelling ways. Severance, season 1 in particular, comes to mind as an example. The problem's not so much that it's slow and more that it's not intriguing, that the extended scenes don't achieve much for how long they are, and that there's a lack of economy in the writing. So many scenes exist to achieve only one goal; e.g. the extended scene where Carol tests the thiopental sodium on herself and watches the footage from it just accomplishes one very simple aim, and yet it takes so long.

My barometer for whether I like a show or not is whether I'm interested to see the next episode, and frankly I could drop this at any point and not really have much of an urge to see what happens next. There's a serious lack of compelling mysteries within the show to drive viewer interest, with the only question I can think of amounting to "How are they going to progress this?" which is a question that moves the focus from something within the story to something outside of it, namely the writers' intentions. In addition, there's so much philosophical ground you could explore (Does disconnecting a member from the hive amount to lobotomy or even murder? Is "de-integrating" the hive, like Carol wants to do, tantamount to killing a hyperconscious, hyperintelligent organism that might have more moral worth, strictly speaking, than any human in existence? And it does claim to be happy), but the show just doesn't engage with much of that. At least, not at the moment.

Carol as a protagonist is quite unagentic, which means that much of the series consists of long sections of her engaging in pointless filler like sleeping on the couch, getting impotently mad at the hivemind, wanting her Sprouts back, etc, while not probing the hive or asking questions that a more interesting protagonist would when placed in such a situation (Episode 4 features more of this, to be fair). A common defence is that her behaviour is realistic given the situation she's put in, but a more important question IMO is if she's a compelling protagonist to watch, and I don't think that's the case - her characterisation and behaviour is paper thin, and she doesn't particularly get up to anything that makes you hugely like her or root for her either. She is demonstrated to be an absolutely miserable person even before the soft apocalypse occurs, and it doesn't make her a particularly enjoyable or interesting character to follow when you're in her shoes all the time.

Yet another element that makes it worse is that she only has a bunch of eternally jovial yes-men to interact with the whole time, and this makes the premise wear thin very quickly. All the interactions feel as deep as a puddle, and this may be the point, but it also makes for a very shallow viewing experience. Most of the other human characters aren't much better either. I was fucking flabbergasted by how easy it was for them to accept life with the hivemind looming over them without thinking too much about what it implied, and in fact outright aggressively attacked anyone who suggested doing anything about it. They seemed almost like ridiculous caricatures, completely in denial, who had been set up just so the writers could knock them down.

I don't think it's a bad show, not yet at least. But the unending positivity towards this show makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills, and I often see such criticisms of the writing being addressed with thin, condescending dismissals along the lines of "You only think the show is uninteresting because you have TikTok brain", or worse, "People don't like Carol because she's a woman" (which is the way the entire Gilligan fandom has been dismissing criticism of the writing of female characters ever since people had the temerity to dislike Skylar White). I'm not saying it's impossible to like the show for valid reasons, but any and all criticism has not been not treated well.

I'm not going to watch it, I was pretty annoyed by the copypasta/youtube videos on the story/idea before.

I find it so frustrating that the protagonist hasn't asked more important questions or come to more important conclusions.

Like does she understand that the hivemind includes all of the world's spymasters and psychologists? That the hivemind could be lying to her and that some of the extreme 'revealing' truths and acts of compliance could have been undertaken to deceive her? She doesn't know that the other unlinked humans are actually unlinked. Even the hivemind's supposed susceptibility and reaction to negative emotions could be fabricated to deceive her and waste her time while it develops a means of assimilating her.

I would assume that I was under constant surveillance and any notes I took in even an encrypted form would be deciphered, but she seems to be happy with her whiteboard. She could consider sleeping in a different location every night or having future important conversations with the other spanish dude in a randomly selected SCIF.

Besides gripes with the plot, yeah I've got similar issues with the pacing. Just long drawn out irrelevant scenes to show and not tell. I kind of understand that the premise would run out pretty quickly without doing this so I can forgive them. There's also the hope that the show finds its feet and gets more creative with things. Plenty of shows had lackluster first seasons before exploding into something much better.

I agree. There are some fundamental questions that she has not asked them yet, like "what is your goal beyond having everyone join the hivemind?"

What else are they working on all day? The writers are holding this answer back from viewers to add mystery, and the payoff in a few episodes might not be worth it. Severence is still doing the same, 2 seasons in.

Aside from that, she does have good reason to believe they aren't linked: the others were still awake while the linked bodies seized and malfunctioned after she yelled at the meet-up. But this could be fabricated like you said.

I was so powerfully underwhelmed by Breaking Bad that I have zero interest in watching anything else Gilligan is involved in. I was intrigued by a column suggesting Pluribus can be read as a metaphor for the Great Awokening, but watching a show I don't enjoy just because I agree with the underlying politics is pretty antithetical to the way I consume media. Weird to think that the entire life cycle of this generation of wokeness – initiation, peak and recession – all took place since the Breaking Bad finale.

I got through SE1 of Breaking Bad. The scenes that I suspect were meant to play for dark humor depressed me.

Probably because everyone I knew who watched TV was telling me it was the greatest show ever made, I stopped watching it. The same is true of Six Feet Under, The Wire, and The Sopranos. One season, much hype from everyone, me stopping. I am just realizing this now. You'd think I'd go the other way with so many recommendations, especially since all these shows can be streamed with a few clicks now, without having to borrow/buy then insert DVD box sets disc by disc. (Of course I once rented a VCR from Blockbuster in a giant bag for a weekend and watched videocassettes with my buddy, so convenience probably isn't the issue.) Probably dadhood keeps me from devoting the hours of time to games, shows, etc. the way I used to. Most media now that I watch is when I am showing my sons movies or shows I used to enjoy. Is this a stage of life? Certainly my dad never sat me down to watch Shane (though I do remember him saying once it was his favorite movie.)

The first season of Breaking Bad is pretty slow, it gets more interesting the deeper Walt digs the hole he’s in.

I watched a few episodes of The Sopranos and it didn't really grab me, just seemed like Goodfellas fanfic, a reaction unaided by the huge overlap in the respective works' casts (David Chase even originally intended to cast Ray Liotta as Tony).

I only got around to watching season 1 of The Wire earlier this year, and while it's definitely a slow burn and the huge cast of characters can make plotlines difficult to follow at times, I can confirm that it lives up to the hype. Watching season 2 as we speak.

Yeah, I also saw a few episodes of The Sopranos and thought "eh, it's okay, but not as good as Wiseguy or Crime Story."

Kind of shocked by this. Breaking Bad is a low attention span normie's idea of the greatest TV show. It's good! ...But Better Call Saul is probably "better." And I'm not going to say that anything is wrong with liking "lower" brow entertainment that is faster paced or more superficially enjoyable (plenty of action shows and comedies are great!), but The Sopranos and The Wire are probably both consensus top three shows for nearly everyone credible and being out of the top five is probably grounds for not being a reliable rater.

I think it's okay to not like the classics, plenty of people complain about Shakespeare, but you have to understand why they are great and interrogate yourself on your likes, dislikes, and your relationship with art if you feel you have appropriate taste but don't like "the best."

In the case of The Wire it demands your attention and is often deliberately paced (although perhaps not truly slow) and at the same time it is truly literary, it's authentic, it says something, and it is beautiful constructed in ways that are often only noticeable in retrospect.

It is okay not to value these things but I think it's important to understand that they are there.

I've found this sort of examination at times helpful in making me enjoy things I wouldn't have otherwise. For instance I disliked Kpop because of the inauthenticity and somewhat disturbing process but managed to just embrace the fact that some of the songs are bangers and my life is richer for it.

For you taking the time to slowly watch some of those "greats" may bring that richness to your life. Maybe start with some of the British shows like Slow Horses which are a lower time commitment.

You misconstrue. While terms like "appropriate taste" chafe, I should (re)iterate that I have not said that I judge any of the shows I've mentioned as necessarily bad. (I reserve judgment at this point.) Nor am I averse to serialized dramas (I watched all of GoT, all of Andor, and at least three seasons of Slow Horses. With my wife I've watched various shows like The Mentalist and Burn Notice and even Stranger Things until SE3 when I just couldn't accept the bratty behavior of the kids who were supposedly in the 80s. Plus a few other culture warry bits.)

My point was rather that I haven't seen fit to make time for these shows, that they didn't grab me for whatever reason. Even with Shakespeare some plays speak to me more than others. I pass over some sonnets in my memorization project because they don't do it for me. That's not necessarily a reflection on the sonnet (or the tv show), at least in this case)--but no piece of art is necessarily fit for everyone at every point in life.

Sorry, I don't mean to imply that you have bad taste, and from my readings of your writings I suspect you have good taste.

At the same time I figure you should truly try those (sounds like you have!) and maybe also force it to see if you can extract the meaning and see if anything about your interests changes.

I am sure I will at some point. My wife as she has gotten older is drawn more toward Korean dramas and quirky love stories, so I'll probably have to find time to watch by myself.

I think you might simply not like the pacing of episodic content. I understand, why. One can't make a long movie: if you're a famous director you might get three hours and change of runtime. And this is all you have to do everything, from the introduction through growth and development to the conclusion. And it's hard: you have to spend weeks going over the script, spend weeks in the cutting room.

Serializing your idea suddenly gives you lots of breathing space: your characters now have sufficient screen time to develop more naturally, you no longer have to chop some of your favourite scenes into a montage. Or maybe the story you have always wanted to tell simply cannot be told in three hours.

A lot of viewers like spending more time with their favourite characters. But there's always a cost: inevitably, B-plots and filler episodes start to sneak in. And is the story really worth the time commitment it demands from you?

Most people I talk to agree that it started in 2014, specifically; we don’t place it to 2016, when Trump replaced Obama, or 2010, which is a nice round number... If you were in one of those spaces and weren’t one of The Converted, then you stuck out like a sore thumb. I somehow avoided having my mind wiped — I attribute that partly to age and partly to being a world-class cranky bastard — and I stubbornly clung to old ways of thinking (e.g. free speech and color blindness are good)

Sometimes I feel like I came from a timeline where affirmative action was already going strong for the better part of the second half of the 21st century, and the timeline got merged into one where it only ascended in the 2010s. Color blindness hasn't been "good" for decades; Bakke was in 1978.

Color blindness and affirmative action are incompatible. I remember wearing a t-shirt saying "Love Sees No Color" shortly after returning from Africa.* Affirmative action was as strong as ever. No one seemed to acknowledge the contradiction.

*around 1993

Worldbox God Simulator

I know someone else here has to play this. If you're not familiar, it's exactly what it sounds like, except that it's not a "god game" in the traditional sense as much as it is a fun toy. There are no win or lose conditions, no mana to squeeze out of your subjects prayers, you're just an omnipotent god. The intended appeal is simply the sheer amount of fuckery you can get up to with its complex set of systems relating to biology, culture, religion, etc.

Like for example, I rolled a big world with a huge mountain in the middle of it. So I hollowed out the inner portion and put down a limited population extremely powerful and ill-tempered angels who can only come and go from their home city via teleportation magic. Then I gave them a xenophobic patriarchal militaristic culture and the ability to remotely influence others toward their ways by invading their dreams.

Then I just filled the rest of the world up with random biomes, let the game populate it with whatever, and gave it a few centuries. All kinds of races emerged, and while some new cultures and religions did take root among them, for the most part the angels just kept making everyone more and more based. Endless fighting ensued. Occasionally I would decide I didn't like someone and sic the angels on them, just because it was more fun than dropping meteors or something.

Eventually the outside world came to be dominated by a race of warlike rhino men, with a disempowered minority of less capable snake men living under them. For shits and giggles I decided to turn the snakes reproductive rate through the roof and see what happens.

When I came back an hour later or whatever I found the snake population smaller than ever. The goddamn rhinos were basically genociding them. Whenever a city would get so many snakes in it that the little icon next to the name turned from a rhino to a snake, the rest of the rhino cities would go "hey we have the xenophobic trait, fuck that snake city" and gang up on it.

I was so amused by this that I finished the snakes off myself and rewarded the rhinos by making them a bloated race of purple and green cannibals with an astronomical breeding rate, designed to do nothing but fight and eat one another for the rest of eternity while serving as feeder mice for my race of evil angels.

And you thought you were "a bad guy in video games" because you did the Dark Brotherhood quest line in Skyrim.

I feel like were I to submit this as data in a psychiatric profile I could get a very good paper out of it.

So I decided the rhinos needed something to eat besides fish and one another. The problem was, they were so hostile and hungry that they would gobble up every other terrestrial life form on sight. Thus I decided to spawn a race of elves, but adapted to live in the ocean.

I made them aquatic, gave them fins, etc. but to keep them from trying to go on land, build things, and get wiped out, I deleted their frontal lobe and essentially reduced them to animals. I let them keep their emotions and capacity for language though, since those seemed to help them breed, which I had them do at a prodigious rate as egg-laying hermaphrodites.

It worked out pretty well. I made them physically weak but curious and outgoing. They would swim right up to a bunch of rhinos intending to blabber at them nonsensically and get shot immediately. Eventually you'd see rhino ships out there harvesting them in bulk via cannon fire.

Guys they made a Chaos God Simulator, they just gave it cute aesthetics but it's pretty great.

(Adds to notes)

Should I get Baldur's Gate 3? Considering picking it up... but idk. I loved the other Divinity games.

Tell us later how many companions manage to worm their way into your pants from innocuous dialog choices.

During my recent downtime I had the choice between playing BG3 and Cyberpunk. I chose BG3 and it was an enjoyable experience, the other mottizens have covered its strengths and flaws quite well.

Having now started playing Cyberpunk I think it has more interesting things to say. It's not quite the same genre, but if you haven't played either, I'd say Cyberpunk has more relevant ideas to explore.

Yeah, with the caveat that (1) if you liked the Divinity games, you'll like this (2) if instead you are coming for the D&D and series lore, you won't. From what I gather elsewhere, it plays about with the lore and takes it different ways.

It's a Larian game, so it's very open to romance (let us say); you don't have to play it that way but if you want the option of sleeping with party members, it's there, and it likes to take the viewpoint that the gods are bastards, the Great Heroes of the past were maybe not all that and being slightly grubby roguish grayish (not all good, not all bad) is the way to survive and have fun in the world. If you've played the Divinity games, you know what I mean.

It's fun, it's not very deep, the plot goes fairly linearly from A to B (you get Good Enough ending, Kinda Good ending, and Bad ending, slightly varying depending what character you are playing). The best thing is to play through the first time fairly straightforwardly so you get a handle on combat mechanics (which can be frustrating; why the razzle-frazzle does this gang of low-level mooks get about three turns each while my party of what should be killing machines just have to stand there and be pincushions?) but then the second time you can experiment with do you want to be a hero or a villain, different original characters, and so on.

I hesitate to say it's a relationship game, but (at least from my view of it), it is mostly about who you choose to play as, how you get on with other members of the party, and how you get on with other characters in the world. There's almost two plots running at the same time: the main one about Saving The World and the second one dealing with Raphael, the arch-devil who keeps popping up and offering you a bargain. Not to get too spoilery, since the surprise is all part of it, but his boss fight should have you going "well, that was different".

Would I recommend it? Yes! And while you play, don't forget to be good to yourself in the matter of treatos!

The writing ranges from tolerable(dumb but excusable to okay if artless - much of the plot) to barely tolerable (Netflix tier slop - certain characters, notably Karlach).

Otherwise it's a fun game, nice graphics, interesting tactical combat on the higher difficulties. I'd defo buy it for say €30.

I got vastly more fun out of Rogue Trader which is mechanically somewhat worse but writing ranges from quite decent to tolerable.

If you're not sure, you can pirate it first, play it a bit and then decide. But personally, I would just say "yes". Haven't heard a single person I know dislike the game.

It plays and feels like D:OS so if you enjoyed that, pick up BG3. I think that they did a really good job with it, though I do have my gripes (for example there are characters whose dialogue sounds like it was taken from Reddit, which is a horrible writing choice for a medieval fantasy like the Forgotten Realms).

Arguably an accurate choice for a setting designed by Ed Greenwood, though.

How compelling is the story? I tried to pick up D:OS but there's just so much pissing about for stuff that doesn't really feel like it matters. I hoped BG3 would be more emotionally deep and driven.

It's alright. I certainly wouldn't call it emotionally deep. It is, in the end, a high fantasy "save the world from apocalyptic threats" story which is entertaining but isn't going to knock socks off. I think the thing the game does best is giving you agency in how to approach situations, they really let you come at things pretty much any way you can think of and still accomplish your goals. Obviously there are limits, cause it's a computer game and it can't react to you creatively, but you won't run into them often.

It is better, with a few segments that are genuinely good, but ultimately its still a Larian game.

What is it that you dont know? If you liked the divinity games then this is a no-brainer, it's effectively Divinity 3.

Oh I thought it was really different and based on the dnd system?

It doesn't matter much for how the game plays. It's still a larian game with the same kind of gameplay and writing, but better.

It's very similar to DOS 2. But better, IMO. Moving to D&D doesn't make a huge difference.

Definitely try it. I'm only a few hours into act 2 (out of 3) but it seems like one of the best rpgs ever. It's pretty wokeified but you can adjust that with mods.

Court opinion:

  • In year 1985, on a dead-end street that terminates at a beach, two properties are created*, one on the beachfront at the end of the street and another with the first property between it and the beach. The beachfront property is encumbered with a restrictive covenant forbidding any construction or landscaping taller than four feet in the rear 40 percent of the lot, "specifically imposed for the benefit of" the non-beachfront property. In year 2002, the federal and state governments obstruct the ocean view with a tall dune in order to mitigate erosion.

  • In year 2015, Frank buys the non-beachfront property for 5.2 megadollars. In year 2018, John buys the beachfront property for 5.3 megadollars (outbidding Frank, who also wants to buy it). John demolishes the existing beachfront house and builds a new one. But the new house's landscaping includes trees taller than four feet in the restricted area, so Frank sues John to force him to prune the trees down to four feet.

  • In court, John argues that the restrictive covenant is superfluous because the ocean view that it was intended to preserve for the non-beachfront property no longer exists. But the trial judge rejects this argument, and the appeals panel affirms. The restrictive covenant is unambiguous, and it is not unreasonable to interpret it as intended to preserve the non-beachfront property's view, not just of the ocean, but also of "the scenic dunes and beachscape that surrounds it".

*Insert Georgism joke about how land cannot be created. Insert Nederland joke about how land can be created.

Court opinion:

  • A woman reports to the police that a man has trespassed in her house and fallen asleep there. The responding police officers are familiar with the trespasser, and note that his car is parked outside the house, with the key and a bunch of cash plainly visible through the car's windows.

  • The officers arrest the trespasser and bring him to the police station, which is just three blocks away from the house. The officers note that the trespasser appears drunk, but do not think that there is enough evidence to additionally charge him with driving to the house while drunk. The officers remind the trespasser that he's too intoxicated to drive legally, offer to drive him home, warn him that his car is presenting an enticing target to thieves, and suggest that he call someone to drive the car away. The trespasser assures the officers that he will get picked up by someone else, and tells them that he won't bother to call anyone to drive the car away. He is not so intoxicated that he is a danger to himself, so the officers release him from custody (rather than making him sober up in an emergency room for a few hours).

  • At this point, three hours have passed since the initial report. One of the officers drives back to the house to make sure that the trespasser doesn't drive the car away. The officer immediately sees the car being driven away. The officer can't see who the driver is, but suspects that it is the trespasser, and on that suspicion tries to pull the car over. The driver tries to escape at high speed for half a mile, but eventually stops and is revealed to be the trespasser. The officer notes that the trespasser still appears intoxicated (though less than he was three hours prior), and arrests the trespasser for (inter alia) drunk driving.

  • At trial, the trespasser argues that the officer did not have enough suspicion to stop the car. But the trial judge rejects this argument, and the appeals panel affirms. The "reasonable suspicion" necessary for a warrantless motor-vehicle stop is a low bar, and the officer in this case cleared that bar when he observed the car being driven away in conjunction with the trespasser's statement that he wasn't going to call anyone to drive it away.

There was also a case that I posted in the Wednesday Wellness Thread.

Two exceptionally reasonable decisions that give me confidence that the justice system works like it should.

I hope John had to pay the court+Frank a shitload of money for wasting their time and being a shitty neighbor.

It looks like Frank did demand court costs in his complaint. But costs are mentioned in neither the trial judge's opinion nor the appeals panel's opinion, so I assume that these costs (and Frank's entitlement to them) will not be determined until after the appeals process has concluded.

Has anyone played Dispatch? I'm hearing a lot of good buzz about this VN but am currently busy with EU5, it's like I've been working two jobs these two weeks.

I've got a major love for its genres*, so grain of salt, but I like it enough that my biggest complaint's that it's too short. Story's pretty strong if sometimes a little jank, the animation's great, and the voice-acting works a lot better than I feared given how heavily they leaned on youtubers. There's definitely room for improvement -- the central minigame is a little too easily broken, and The Last-Second Redemption feels like it's more earned by a player than by a character -- but it's well worth the entry fee.

* both VNs with some strategy or reaction gameplay dropped in like Uplink, and serious-but-not-grimdark superheroics like the Astro City and Common Grounds comics.

It's great, I can easily recommend it. It's mostly an interactive movie, though. As opposed to an actual video game.

The biggest things that pop in my head about it: the characters are awesome and interesting, the writing is almost all excellent. And the choices matter a bit more than they did in older Telltale games. You can do two playthroughs that feel very different from eachother. Oh, and the voice-acting is genuinely phenomenal.

There are a few graphic scenes (boobs) but there's an option to censor them.

As an Eternum, Ripples and Pale Carnations enjoyer, why would I censor them?

I played Dispatch. It's fun. It's pretty. It's not really a game but a story with aspects that make it more immersive than a normal TV show. I will be happy to buy whatever else AdHoc Studio comes up with.

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